Ali­cia Llanos

The ANSA McAL group of com­pa­nies has pledged $500,000 worth of re­lief sup­plies to Haiti. Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, Chair­man Emer­i­tus of ANSA McAL said yes­ter­day that the group of com­pa­nies was com­mit­ted to do­ing all it could to as­sist the Hait­ian peo­ple re­cov­er from the earth­quake which left thou­sands dead and much more in need of re­lief. ANSA Mc AL group cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith said the group had pledged to send $500,000 worth of re­lief sup­plies which in­clud­ed food, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, match­es and drink­ing wa­ter.

She said when the group, like most of the na­tion, heard the dev­as­tat­ing news, the "chair­man and the ex­ec­u­tive im­me­di­ate­ly de­cid­ed to re­spond. It wasn't a mat­ter of when and how, it was a mat­ter of we have to re­spond." She said the first move of the group was to open up the TP­CL me­dia groups to trans­mit not on­ly what had hap­pened in Haiti, but how peo­ple could help. Dy­er-Grif­fith said the group had al­so re­ceived over­whelm­ing sup­port from oth­er com­pa­nies, such as Blue Wa­ters, who had pledged to do­nate sup­plies and/or vol­un­teer as drop-off zones. She said a ma­jor hur­dle was not col­lect­ing re­lief sup­plies but get­ting them to Haiti.

She added that the group's ship­ping com­pa­ny Al­ston's Ship­ping had con­tact­ed their Flori­da part­ners who had con­tact with Haiti and were de­vis­ing means as to how to get the sup­plies to the is­land. She said the sec­ond phase of the group re­lief ef­forts would be com­mit­ting to the re­build­ing stage. At this point, she said, the ma­jor­i­ty of re­lief ef­forts were off and the group was com­mit­ted to go be­yond ini­tial re­lief ef­forts to as­sist in the re­build­ing of Haiti. Dy­er-Grif­fith said the group would look at send­ing it its con­struc­tion com­pa­nies such as Abel in the form of bricks, build­ing sup­plies and con­crete to as­sist re­build­ing the na­tion.

She said the plan was a long term and ANSA Mc AL was ded­i­cat­ed to help re­store some form of sta­bil­i­ty to the Hait­ian pop­u­la­tion. She ad­vised the pub­lic to close­ly fol­low the TP­CL's me­dia cov­er­age to learn where drop-off zones would be and how they can help pro­vide some re­lief to Haiti.